A Quick History of MMRch Madness
MMRch Madness is the annual user voting contest held by 93.3 WMMR in Philadelphia. While there are more detailed analyses available on this wiki, this page is meant to be a quick start guide for anyone looking into the tournament for the first time. WMMR primer If you're reading this, chances are pretty good you already know who WMMR is. The station is of a rock format, playing everything from classic bands like The Rolling Stones to the songs that came out last week, and everything in between with shockingly regular distribution. The four regions this year are named for the four daytime DJs, Pierre Roberre at midday, Jaxon in the afternoon, and Matt Kord in the evening, plus the morning show run by Preston & Steve. How Rounds Occur Match-ups will take place on an hourly schedule for the duration of the tournament. They begin at 11 am for the day and conclude (normally) at 9 pm. Each round is four songs, two by each band. During that time and that time only, you can vote by calling the station or by text voting. In the past, text voting has been to 39333 with a lone number 1 for the top option in the bracket and a number 2 for the bottom option. The winner is announced on-air immediately. You can listen to the station via their website, www.wmmr.com. The Quick Annual Summaries Let Mortal Kombat Begin ('06) The tournament was first held in 2006. Another popular and now defunct station, Y-100, used to run such a tournament each year, but the results were annoyingly predictable. When Y-100 disappeared, 'MMR decided to start their own tournament. The first bracket was made by the station staff. It was brilliant in that it reflected the different timespans that WMMR represented. Unlike Y-100, who was almost exclusively current (read: 90's) music, WMMR is a generational rock station. It seemed only appropriate to put the bands of similar eras together. Some of the band choices and seedings were imperfect, but overall the tournament went extremely well. Votes were placed exclusively via phone during the matches, which had a duration of one song by each band, then one more song by each band. The regional winners that year were Pink Floyd, Metallica, Pearl Jam, and Godsmack. The 00's Region was a total crapshoot, with the finals being an 11 seed vs a 13 seed. The others were much more predictable. Famously, The Rolling Stones lost in the second match of the tournament against Cheap Trick, and to this day the Stones have NEVER won a round one match. Pink Floyd beat Led Zeppelin for the first of many grudge matches between the two, and ultimately beat Pearl Jam in the finals. The Year of the Bandwagon ('07) The station added text voting to the matches in their sophomore year, which proved apocryphal in the end. Voters were told what to text during each match, usually the band's name if it was reasonable to spell it out. (Good luck spelling Evanescence!) Sometimes it was a shortened version instead. Likely because the station hadn't realized that texting votes would dwarf phone votes naturally, and because the method of text voting was rather erratic, there were TONS of weird upsets in '07. (1) Red Hot Chili Peppers lost to Live. (2) Led Zeppelin lost to Lynyrd Skynyrd. (3) Van Halen lost to The Clash. Metallica and Foo Fighters, both 1 seeds, lost to the respective 8 seeds. Oh yeah, and The Killers were inexplicably a 2 seed. Their round one opponent was a rather new band named Breaking Benjamin, who would stage one of the most ridiculous bandwagon upset bids ever seen since they were in the weakest division, and on the side of the region that was especially weak without a real 2 or 3 seed. (lol Nickelback.) With each round, the momentum built up, and BB won the 00's region. That was just part of the tale, though. In the 70's region, after Led Zeppelin lost early, The Grateful Dead rose from the ranks to beat Pink Floyd and take the region. The midday DJ is Pierre Roberre, who is a renowned deadhead. During his shift, The Grateful Dead always wins. During anyone else's shift, The Grateful Dead always loses. It just so happened that all four rounds were on Pierre's watch. It's not that Pierre influenced the matches DIRECTLY, but the time of day itself is before 4:20, and therefore more conducive to deadhead voters. Having an empathetic host merely helped a bit. The real story of the tournament, however, was Pearl Jam. After losing in the finals, PJ fans were cocky and mouthing off about how this would be Pearl Jam's year. Indeed, Pearl Jam mostly blew through the tournament,other than having a surprising amount of trouble with a new contestant named Tool. Folks wanted to know why Tool was left out the year before, and here they were...and they won every match up until they very nearly beat the mighty Pearl Jam. When PJ fans looked at the final four of them, The Grateful Dead, Bon Jovi, and Breaking Benjamin, they giggled with delight and assumed they had won already. Bon Jovi is actually a threat in Philadelphia unlike anywhere else in the nation, but BJ was taken out by the Breaking Benjamin bandwagon and the Pearl Jam fans laughed that much harder. And then they screwed up their text vote by not listening. Pearl Jam fans had gone through a bevy of different text instructions, and failed to listen to the correct one for the finals. The match ended up being Pearl Jam fans vs the world, and after kneecapping themselves, the Pearl Jam fans lost. Defying all explanation, an unknown band with a total of two singles regularly played on the air managed to win the tournament. A Return to Normalcy ('08) If '07 was the year all hell broke loose, '08 was the year where things went exactly as expected. Part of this was because the listeners voted on seeding, so there weren't as many weird placements at the onset. Part of it was because the station figured out how to do the text thing right. Besides that, there were only a few particulars worth mentioning. Tool beat Pearl Jam this year in the battle of the 90's, and has never looked back since. (Pearl Jam is lifetime 1-4 against Tool so far, and usually looks bad in the process.) The 00's Region, normally wildly unpredictable, was won by the 1 seed after defeating the 2 seed. And Led Zeppelin leveraged their one-and-only victory over Pink Floyd into a tournament win, beating Tool and Metallica in the end. Tool Rising ('09) In 2007, Tool debuted to three wins. In 2008, they won four times. Tool fans were surprisingly crafty, and learned how to work the vote. Famously, after Tool won in round 2 over Pearl Jam (again), and were waiting for their opponent, they anti-voted the band they believed was the bigger threat, catapulting Stone Temple Pilots to a victory over Nirvana. It was small surprise Tool won the 90's, and after Pink Floyd finally reclaimed their crown at the head of the 70's region, Tool beat them too. There was only one band in the entire bracket that could manufacture votes in the same manner as Tool did, which was essential because it's proven almost impossible to beat Tool by playing their game, or playing any other game for that matter. However, that one band was their opponent in the finals, and Metallica set them down to win the tournament. Oh, and the 00's was (1) Foo Fighters vs. (2) Linkin Park again, but this time the 2 seed won. The Writing on the Wall ('10) The very first match of the '10 tournament was Metallica being beaten by (16) The Clash, to rallying cries by the 11 am voters of getting last year's champ out so somebody else could win. The first few matches, before everyone wakes up to the tournament actually happening, sometimes completely throw the tournament, and this year the Tool-killers were dead before the contest had even begun. A Tool victory was virtually inevitable. But the 80's Region didn't stop there. Bon Jovi was the only other band to have won the 80's, and had lost to Metallica every other year. Without Metallica to stop them, they would...lose to rookie Iron Maiden in round 1. Well then what about Tom Petty, the fellow who beat Metallica two years ago? He would...lose to Ozzy Osbourne. Nearly every band who was considered a favorite by seeding lost in the 80's outright, ultimately leaving (6) Rush to fend off the assault of **TWO** MMRch Madness rookies, whien it was unheard of that a rookie would even win two rounds. Rush disposed of Stevie Ray Vaughn (who had somehow beaten AC/DC,) and then slaughtered Iron Maiden, who had previously looked like a blender in dispatching Bon Jovi, The Clash, and then Van Halen. All this just to emphasize that the 80's region was not going to stop Tool. Except that they almost did. The progressive rock trio had Tool on the ropes when the final whistle blew, and Tool squeaked out a victory. Looking at Tool's track record past and present, this was extremely impressive on Rush's part. In fact, Tool had a much easier time defeating Pink Floyd (for the second year in a row) in the finals. This was also the first year that a repeat winner had emerged out of the 00's region, who had seemed before now to have winner-by-committee. The Phone Call ('11) The 00's had settled into a predictable Foo Fighters vs Linkin Park duel. The 90's were won by Tool each year after beating Pearl Jam. The 80's were ''usually''Metallica's private property. All of that was going to plan. However, the ever-constant 70's region would be the one to be shot to swiss cheese this year. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were set to meet this year for the first time before round four thanks to horrid placement as the 6 seed on LZ's part. The timing of their prospective round 3 match was Friday night at 10 pm, also, to try to finish the first three rounds before the weekend. That was an awful timeslot for either, but especially Floyd. It turns out none of that mattered. After talking with a local area fan about replacing her lost Aerosmith memoribilia after a gas explosion destroyed her home, frontman Steven Tyler caught wind of the tournament and decided to call the station on a whim. Listeners were moved by the story and touched by the gesture. Led Zeppelin barely lost to Aerosmith in the second round, with many of the phone voters expressing a pro-Tyler phone call sentiment. Without that phone call, Aerosmith would *NOT* have beaten Led Zeppelin. They did, however, likely beat Floyd of their own merit, given the timing of the contest. Still, the bandwagon was on. The final four was Metallica vs Linkin Park and Tool vs Aerosmith. The ever-sneaky Tool fans voted for Linkin Park to try to get rid of Metallica, and by the narrowest of margins, it worked. How close that match would have been without the silent hand of Tool is anybody's guess, but it didn't matter because Tool couldn't hold things up on their end, and got completely flattened by the bandwagon. So did Linkin Park. For the second time in six years, the winner was fueled by a snowball effect, but at least this time around Aerosmith had a somewhat legitimate claim to the title. (Seriously, folks, still...Breaking Benjamin??) The End of the Eras ('12) What happens in 2012 remains to be seen. However, the most important factor in this tournament will be the abolition of age brackets. We get round 1 matches like Hendrix vs Weezer, AC/DC vs Nickelback, Godsmack vs Marley, Pearl Jam vs the Eagles. This year's tournament will be either one of the best or one of the worst. I suspect the former. Important Miscellaneous Information Tournament Winners 2006: Pink Floyd (over Metallica, Pearl Jam, Godsmack 2007: Breaking Benjamin (over The Grateful Dead, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam 2008: Led Zeppelin (over Metallica, Tool, Foo Fighters 2009: Metallica (over Pink Floyd, Tool, Linkin Park 2010: Tool (over Pink Floyd, Rush, Foo Fighters 2011: Aerosmith (over Metallica, Tool, Linkin Park) Particular Bands' Histories * The Rolling Stones have lost every year in round one. EVERY year. Only Motley Crue has duplicated that, and they usually get crappy seeding. * The two winningest bands in tournament history are Pink Floyd and Tool. Tool was ommitted in the first year of the tournament, and since then nobody has won the tournament without beating Tool first. (With one slight asterisk for 2007.) * Pearl Jam loses every year to Tool. Bon Jovi and Rush lose every year to Metallica. Those bands do well enough otherwise to ensure they reach their intended victor. * Bob Marley, despite not actually being a rock artist, is surprisingly popular. * The Grateful Dead always win during the noon shift, and generally wilt after 4:20. This has led to one impressive run on their part, in 2007. * Guns'n'Roses will always lose because Axl is a "flaming terd." If you aren't from Philadelphia, you wouldn't understand the complete significance of that statement, though you might still be inclined to agree. You can find information on ALL the bands and their tournament histories here. Useful links * The bands page immediately above this. * This Year's Tournament page and Tournament Predictions * Wiki main page * WMMR's tournament page * Past Tournaments (more detailed analysis)